Mumbai: Share prices turned sharply weak and the Sensex tumbled by 55.79 points to close at 5196.99 on the stock exchange in Mumbai today (Aug 6, 2004) following profit-booking at higher levels on another surge in global crude oil prices.

In New York, the benchmark contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, yesterday ended at a new historic peak of $ 44.41 a barrel, affecting the sentiment throughout the globe, dealers said.

Operators and retail investors turned cautious and resorted to heavy sell-off as rise in crude oil prices could lead to upsurge in import bill, which would have negative impact on Indian economy, they added.

Another market-dampening factor was the steep rise in inflation rates, which shot up to a whopping 7.51 per cent, highest in the last two years.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened lower at 5249.73 as against yesterday's (Aug 5, 2004) close of 5252.78 but rallied to a high of 5262.89. However, it fell back to a low of 5166.19 before ending at 5196.99, a steep fall of 1.06 per cent.

Petrochem giant and the top heavyweight, RIL, suffered a sharp setback on heavy offloading by institutional investors and mainly led the Sensex fall.

A steep decline in other index-based shares like ONGC, HPCL, ICICI Bank, Infosys Tech, MUL, Satyam Computer, Wipro, Tata Motors, Zee Telefilms and Tisco also contributed to the Sensex loss.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled by 163.48 and 33.43 points respectively last night.